Caribbean (54 page)

The inn quickly became noted for three features: the red-haired keeper who had served as a buccaneer with Henry Morgan, the beautiful and vivacious black-haired girl who tended bar, and the older fellow, now forty-one, with a deep scar on his left cheek, who occupied a chair at a corner table, telling dubious but interesting stories of his supposed adventures at the sack of Panamá, the wild days at Tortuga and his escape from a Spanish prison. He had a host of tales and became one of the reasons why sailors hurried to the Giralda as soon as their ships anchored. Rarely did they mention a port at which he had not touched: Maracaibo, Havana, Porto Bello, Cádiz, Lisbon, he’d seen them all, and then he’d add, with a touch of true disappointment: “Cartagena, I never reached. We tried, but the Dons were too strong for us. Maybe if I ever go out again …”

However, it was Nancy who established the spirit of the place, with her constant smile and bright laughter and the little tricks she had developed to keep the customers happy. When one sailor made bold with her after a long trip at sea, she did not take offense. Shouting to all in the bar, she would cry: “Did you hear what he just said?” and she would repeat word for word the man’s improper proposal, but then, when everyone was jeering, she would chuck the sailor under the chin, plant a kiss on his forehead, and say, equally loudly: “But he didn’t mean a word of it.”

Her lively ways fathered the rumor that The Giralda Inn was a place of assignation, with Nancy being little better than an ordinary prostitute, and when this reached the ears of Sir Isaac and Lady Clarissa,
they became outraged—Isaac, because it demeaned the exalted position he occupied in the island; Clarissa, because it was an offense against morals—and once again she visited her obsequious clergyman with a demand that he make his churchmen do something about the scandal. A vigorous drive was launched to close down the Giralda as a menace to the proprieties of Little England. Sermons were preached and discussions held, with Sir Isaac leading the assault under his wife’s sharp supervision, and it looked for a while as if Will Tatum and his ugly breed would once again be thrown off the island.

But by this time things had changed, for many of the planters—certainly the smaller ones—were fed up with the domination of outworn Cavaliers like Oldmixon and Tatum, so that when the time came for a showdown, the islanders discovered that they loved honest Will Tatum, scar and all, and disdained his pompous brother, Sir Isaac.

This showdown came in a public meeting which Isaac and Clarissa had goaded their toadies into convening. “We shall kill two birds if we manage it properly,” Isaac predicted. “We’ll outlaw the Giralda as a public menace, and without that anchor to cling to, Will can be run out of town.”

The plot was faulty, for unexpected speakers preempted the platform, launching such a barrage against the petty tyrannies of the older Tatums that unruly listeners began to cheer each accusation. Sir Isaac stood revealed as a would-be dictator, and an insufferable prude as well. When it was clear that his plans, whatever they might have been, had been frustrated, a farmer with a modest number of acres took the floor. “I think we’ve uncovered this man’s plot,” he said, and pointed contemptuously toward Sir Isaac. “He wants to run his brother out of Barbados, as he and his wife once did long ago. I’d like to hear what the man involved thinks about this, and so would we all. Tell us, Will.”

Gratified that old wrongs were being righted, Will rose, coughed to clear his voice, then said quietly, turning his back on his brother: “When I first fled the island, I went with this scar across my face. You know who gave it to me. I played the pirate. I fought the Don, and when he won I was an inch from being burned alive. I cut logwood in Honduras, and fought with Sir Harry Morgan at Panamá. I rounded the Horn, and no man should be forced to do that. Now I’ve made it back home, and you ask me what I think of my brother. After such adventures, do you think I would bother my head over that silly ass?”
The crowd roared. Will was carried back on shoulders to the Giralda. And when the lights were dimmed and night regained the town, Sir Isaac and his wife slipped away through the side streets.

Two nights later, Will decided that the victory of honest men over tyrants should be celebrated, so he organized an affair at which he paid for drinks and refreshments for all who came from the waterfront. “A late feast for my nephew and his bride,” he called it, and Ned wondered why his uncle was creating such a fuss, singing old songs and telling wild stories, but as midnight approached, Will banged a glass for attention and asked quietly: “How many of you saw that Dutch ship dropping anchor out there this morning?” and when two men indicated they had, he addressed them: “They’ve spent all day unloading cargo, and in the morning they sail westward to Port Royal.”

Nancy looked at her husband as if to ask: “What is this?” and Will said: “When she sails, I’ll be aboard. I still have old scores to settle with Spain,” and all in the room gathered about to see if he meant what he said. He did, and when some asked why he should leave his good life, he replied with solemn emphasis: “Time comes when a man wants to go back to what he does best,” and because Ned and Nancy realized that their uncle’s violent life meant they might never see him again, they stayed close as he sat in his corner, regaling younger sailors with his tales of far places. When the night was late Nancy heard him tell a sailor: “I should never have picked up this scar. Carelessness. If you get one, young feller, and you will, get it for trying something big.” And in the morning he was gone.

The Dutch ship put into Port Royal, where Will saw once more the wild activity of that Caribbean hellhole: the small boats scurrying among British ships of the line to bring sailors ashore for the grog shops and the girls, pickpockets plying their silent trade, interrupted now and then by cries of “Stop that thief!” but most of all, the movement of people of every color, every tongue, in and out of the hundreds of shops and greasy eating places. Port Royal on a bright January morning was a striking relief from the English aloofness of Barbados, and he looked forward to being back in the business of hauling captured Spanish vessels and crews and silver into its turmoil.

To his surprise, he had difficulty finding a berth on a privateer, for
despite his acknowledged bravery when boarding a Spanish ship with pistol and cutlass, there were few privateers scouring the seas these days. As one old French sailor explained: “Henry Morgan, he’s Sir Henry now. Lieutenant governor. Seeks to make his English king happy. Arrests all pirates.”

“You mean …” Tatum could not believe that this old Welsh pirate had allowed himself to be seduced by a big title and a little salary, but the Frenchman corrected him: “Not one title, many,” and he ticked off Morgan’s new glories: “Acting governor, lieutenant general, vice-admiral, colonel commandant of the Port Royal regiment, judge of the Admiralty Court, justice of the peace and Custos Rotulorum.” Seeing Will gaping, he added with a leering wink: “The old rule. Set a thief to catch a thief.”

“I’ve got to see him,” Will interrupted. “If I can just talk to him man to man …” But when he tried to visit his shipmate at his office inland in Spanish Town, he was bluntly told by the young officer guarding access: “Sir Henry refuses to see old privateers. He has one message for them: ‘Go home and leave Spain alone.’ ”

Tatum would not accept this, and when he persisted in wanting an explanation, the young man said: “Our king has promised the King of Spain: ‘No more pirates will be allowed in Port Royal. No more attacks on your Spanish ships.’ Sir Henry obeys the king.”

Appalled by this shameless twisting in the wind, Tatum went back to Port Royal without seeing Morgan, and after much thrashing about, found a berth on a Dutch pirate ship whose captain did not feel bound by any agreements made in Europe: “In the Caribbean, we decide,” and he decided, to Tatum’s delight, to prowl the Main once more for Spanish prizes.

Whenever in the years that followed he succeeded in taking a ship from the King of Spain, Tatum was first aboard the stricken vessel, and while Dutch sailors fought among themselves for the booty, he raged with cutlass and pistol, slaying any Spaniards who gave even a hint they might oppose him, until his Dutch captain had to cry: “Tatum! Stop!”

As the Dutch buccaneer prowled the Caribbean, word of Tatum’s wild behavior trickled back to Port Royal, and British officers warned Lieutenant Governor Morgan: “You’ve got to discipline this damned fool. If the Spanish king complains to our king, hell’s to pay.”

So once when the Dutch ship was spotted returning laden with prize money to Port Royal, Acting Governor Morgan, racked with
pain from the gout in his left big toe occasioned by his excessive drinking, hobbled into his office and growled out an ugly set of orders: “Intercept that ship. Fetch me that crazy Will Tatum,” and when the old pirate was brought before him, he said simply: “You’re a menace to the king. You’re living many years too late.”

Will was appalled at the appearance of his former captain, immense in girth, red of face, his foot in bandages, his voice a beer-heavy rasp. And then he heard the brutal decision: “Tatum, to prove we’re trying to maintain the peace, I’ve got to deliver you as prisoner to the Spanish governor at Cartagena.”

“No!” Will shouted.

“King’s orders.”

“Spaniards hate me. They’ll kill me.” When Morgan smiled, Will pleaded: “But I was your right-hand man at Porto Bello … Panamá.”

This particular plea amused Morgan, for he remembered Tatum well: a hero once when he blew up the Spanish soldiery at Porto Bello, again when he led the storming of the defenses at Panamá, but an arrant knave when he organized the loud protests at the division of spoils on the beach. And the last offense obliterated the two contributions. He owed this old buccaneer nothing.

“Different times, different problems,” he said curtly as he limped from the office.

As the English ship bearing the prisoner Tatum approached Cartagena, that fatal port where so many English lives had been lost, Will could not believe the fatal twists of history. Years ago in Cádiz he had been within two days of being burned at the stake, but he had escaped to serve Portugal, England, and Henry Morgan, always against the immortal enemy Spain. Now he was being delivered, wrists bound, back into the Spanish captivity he had escaped thirty years before, and to a punishment equally barbaric.

His trial before the Inquisition opened with his soulful protestations that he had been an ordinary sailor, no better, no worse than others, but the prosecuter brought forward six Spaniards who testified that this man, Will Tatum, infamously known on the Main, had led assaults on their ships, killed their mates, and sent them and others adrift in small boats with no sails and little water. His guilt was unquestioned, and when the senior judge intoned: “You have
offended God and Spain,” Will supposed that he was about to receive another sentence of death. But since the Inquisition in Cartagena was notoriously loath to order executions, he heard a more lenient sentence: “Life imprisonment as a rower in the galleys,” and in the moments after the words were spoken he thought it sardonic that he who had been such a menace to Spanish shipping would now spend the rest of his life rowing it across the seven seas.

But now a sharp-eyed junior priest noticed the faded B on Will’s left cheek, a most unusual mark, and recalled that an English prisoner marked like that had not only escaped from the Inquisition in Cádiz but had murdered guards in doing so, and Will was brought back to the black-robed judges to hear his new sentence: “Judgment passed in Spain on the heretical criminal Tatum will be executed here. By hanging.”

Back in his cell, Will reflected on his tumultuous life as a buccaneer: nights of wild celebration in Port Royal, cutting logwood in Honduras, sacking Panamá, getting lost in rounding Cape Horn, capturing a Spanish galleon off Cuba, losing the
Pride of Devon
off Cádiz, in jail and out, and four days from now … a gibbet in Cartagena. He shrugged his shoulders and went to sleep.

On the third morning he was visited by two distinguished citizens of Cartagena who knew him well, the
condesa
and her spiritual adviser, Fray Baltazar, who spoke first: “Will Tatum, the sentence against you is just and you deserve to die for your crimes in the Old World as well as the New. However, the
condesa
wishes to speak.” And she said in those crisp tones that Will remembered so well: “Tatum, despite our long ordeal, you helped bring my daughter Inés home a virgin. I do not forget, and have prevailed upon the
conde
to spare your life.”

He was released that day, and as soon as he was free he hurried unrepentant to the seafront to sign on with any ship that might carry him back to Port Royal, but when he appeared near the water he was apprehended by three policemen under the control of Fray Baltazar: “You have been such an implacable enemy of Spain that you must remain here in Cartagena for the rest of your life. We dare not risk having you play pirate against our shipping.”

Submitting to this more lenient sentence, Will became a laborer on public roads away from the seafront, and after seven months of tiring work he accepted the dismal prospect of spending the remainder of his life in such toil, when, on a day in late 1692, gloomy Fray
Baltazar hurried his mule to where Will labored, shouting: “Tatum! They need you at the wharf!” and Tatum made a comical sight as he rode behind the priest, clinging to his robes.

The problem was perplexing, for a Dutch trading ship had limped into port, where it had no right to be, with its spars and decks a shambles. Its crew had a tale so preposterous that the captain was forced to repeat it at least six times in his broken Spanish, and still the Cartagena officials could not believe him. When Tatum arrived he was shoved forward: “You speak English and you know Port Royal. What can sensible men make of what he is saying?” And it was Will’s careful rendition that was entered into the chronicles of Cartagena: